Turntide Leverages Ansys to Reduce Development Costs for Electric-Powered Construction Vehicles

Estimated reading time: 1 minute

Turntide Technologies, developer of electrification and sustainable operations technologies, is leveraging Ansys solutions to produce electric vehicle powertrain components that help its customers transform commercial and industrial vehicles from gas and diesel engines to clean, quiet battery electric machines — a significant step towards achieving global net-zero goals.

While many automakers electrify passenger vehicles, Turntide is focused on supplying electrification solutions for commercial and industrial vehicles, such as construction equipment, agricultural machines, trains, marine and freight movers. These vehicles present greater sustainability challenges than passenger vehicles because of their heavy-duty loads, work cycles, and vibration. Timely, cost-effective simulation is essential to develop the solution components.

Turntide uses a suite of Ansys tools to design and test components for construction equipment such as front wheel loaders or mini excavators. These simulations show the impact of extreme scenarios including weather, vibration, impact, and corrosive exposure to salt, sand and chemicals and provide performance and safety data.

“Typically, testing a product prototype for electromagnetic compatibility at an accredited test facility costs more than $34,000 over a two-week period,” said Biswadip Shome, senior director, simulation and analysis at Turntide. “Instead of performing prototype-based trial and error solutioning, which is not only time consuming but also expensive, a physics-based simulation using Ansys toolsets provides a significant business advantage. We estimate that we save about 25% on development costs by using simulation.”

Critical simulations for inverters, one of the most important components for electric vehicles, are conducted for shock and vibration to ensure the printed circuit board assembly can endure rugged environments, and thermal systems are simulated to evaluate coolant pressure drops and effectiveness in harsh climates.

“It's astounding to see the energy and carbon emissions savings that Turntide is achieving by using Ansys simulation to develop electric powertrains,” said Walt Hearn, vice president of worldwide sales and customer excellence at Ansys. “We are proud to be part of their success story.”